Not too many weeks ago this would have been "Breaking News." Guess things have changed.
It appears "Ron Harris" is embeded at the Syrian border. Here's an earlier story by him:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/World/EC976A67F58BE63186256E760014BF23?OpenDocument&Headline=Commemorating+the+life+of+a+comrade HUSAYBAH, Iraq - Out here on the farthest reaches of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, they are calling it "The Silent War," the one where Marines are mortared and maimed, bombed and blown up, ambushed and killed, and almost nobody but they and their families know about it.
Out here on the western perimeter, a few hundred yards from the Syrian border, a battalion of Marines, spearheaded by the embattled Lima Company, has been fighting for nearly two months to forge stability on a piece of territory that the Army's 82nd Airborne carved out before them, also in relative anonymity. They don't make the headlines, not like those in Fallujah or Baghdad, but they still bleed and die, still mourn the loss of their comrades.
This week, they gathered to commemorate the lives and deaths of two of their brothers, Lance Cpl. Christopher Wasser and Lance Cpl. Elias Torres. Wasser was killed Thursday when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb next to his vehicle. Torres died after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into his vehicle during a late-night ambush on Friday.
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Out here, the 1,000-plus men and women of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, under the command of Lt. Col. Matthew Lopez, work in relative obscurity. Their commander is Lt. Col Matthew Lopez, who jokingly calls himself "a Mexican from Chicago" and who is credited with working wonders in turning around the town of Karbala last year.
Now he and his Marines are trying to create the same sort of turnaround in Al Qaim, a region about the size of Bermuda with 230,000 residents located in the Al Anbar province. Al Qaim is populated largely by Sunni Muslims, many of whom prospered under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It's a much nastier place.
"Karbala was a lot safer," said Lance Cpl. Craig Carp, 20, of Celina, Tenn., and a close friend of Wasser. "This is a hellhole."
At the "tip of the spear" is Lima Company, nearly 200 Marines who are taking the brunt of the action. The unit is headed by Capt. Rich Gannon, a slight, soft-spoken Marine whose men describe him as "tough as a $2 steak."
The battalion's No. 1 mission is civil affairs - building schools, improving roads, fixing sewers, cleaning up trash, repairing soccer fields, installing lighting, developing a police force.
But in Lima Company's area of operation, those things have been put on the back burner. They are in a fight.
Since arriving in late February and taking over eight buildings that had once been a trading post between Syria and Iraq, the unit has been bombed and mortared almost incessantly. On one night, they counted more than 20 mortar rounds fired into their area. Three Marines have been killed and nearly 40 members of Lima have been wounded.
"Make no mistake about it, we're here in a battle," Gannon told the men of Weapons Platoon during a meeting last week. "I want you to go out and paint a school, like we did before. But right now, we're going to go out and kill some people, because there is some killing that needs to be done."
Gannon was surprised when he saw the heavy casualty reports from the 82nd Airborne, which had been there before the Marines.
"I was, like, 'Whoa, why haven't we been reading about this?'" he said while sitting in the small office that is his command center. "What's been going on here? Have they been having some kind of silent war? And, sure enough, they had been."
..."We've had more contact here in a week than we did in the entire first phase of the war," said Lt. Isaac Moore of Wasilla, Alaska, who fought with Lima last year and now is with Weapons Company.
Cpl. Matt Nale, 32, of Seattle, said he has seen it all, from mines to bombs to small-arms fire.
"I don't think there's a day that we've been out that we haven't been hit," he said.
Most of the injuries have been relatively minor. Fewer than 10 Marines have been taken out of commission.
"Still," said Navy Corpsman Justin Purviance of Denver, "if we keep getting wounded at the rate we're going, one of every three men in the unit will be injured before we get out of here."
All around the base, which is bounded by massive, 7-foot-tall barriers filled with sand, there are signs of enemy assaults. There are holes in the sand where mortars have fallen, a shrapnel-ridden makeshift toilet where one Marine was injured and the mess hall ceiling, which is pockmarked by holes from shrapnel that rained down on it one night.
"We wait every day thinking, who's going to be the next person who's going to be hit?" said Lance Cpl. Richard Laventer, 22, of Old Fort, N.C. "It's a shame that I've actually been practicing my Medivac request to make sure that I've got it right when we get hit."
It seems almost every Marine here has a story to tell.
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The Marines know that their fight is largely underreported, far away from where most media concentrate.
"It's like, we're out here in the middle of the desert on our own," said Lance Cpl. Mischu Brady, 22, of Boise, Idaho.
"I guarantee you that people don't understand what we're going through," said Lt. Dan Carroll, 27, of Sugarland, Texas. "Sometimes, you walk right by a bomb, and there's just nobody there to push the button."
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Rest in peace beloved soldiers. Prayers for their loved ones.....
Hmmm..and NO MENTION of iraqi muslim extremisty murdering pig casualties either?
Gee---whose side are 'american' reporters on?
Same sides as ...
Carter --- Cuba - communist Ecuador - U.N.
Kerry --- North Vietnam - France - U.N.
Ramsey Clark - North Vietnam - Frnace - U.N.
Lyndon La Rouche - France - Iraq - Russia - U.N.
Bill Clinton - Osama - Muslim Extremist in Bosnia - Monica
Hillary Clinton - Every Anti-American in the world
Gen Clark - Bosnian muslim drug lords - U.N. - Iraq - France
Add them all up - all of the 'leaders' of the democrat party have all been close friends of America's enemies since the 1960's - communist party back then and now they are in bed (probably literally) now with the murdering islamic terrorists.
They will snuggle up to anyone who will help DESTROY our country. It is time they are brough to justice - each and every one of them!
I think it's time to go back to shock and awe - and lots of enemy deaths.
